


Party Crashing

by akwardcadabra



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Birthday Party, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gob Is Sad, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, My First Work in This Fandom, Please be gentle, Protective Tony, Tony Is Angry About That
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 12:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16085891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akwardcadabra/pseuds/akwardcadabra
Summary: After Gob receives a call from his nephew who asks him why he isn't at his mother's birthday party, which his brother had told him would not take place, he questions if his family even cares for him. Tony is there to comfort him and suggests going to the party uninvited. He is definitely not happy with his boyfriend's family.





	Party Crashing

**Author's Note:**

> Am I late on the AD train? Maybe, but that's fine. This is my first fic for this fandom, so please be gentle with me.  
> I had writer's block for anything else and I just wrote what I was currently obsessing with. But don't worry, I will surely update other fanfictions when my writer's block eases up on me.  
> Anyways, enjoy ^^

_Go away, Getaway. Stay away Getaway_

Both Gob and Tony looked up from where they were sitting on the couch. Sighing heavily, Gob swung his legs off Tony’s lap where he had situated them before. The other man watched him as he picked up the phone and checked the caller ID.

“My nephew?” He asked before shrugging and answering the phone. “Hello?”

“Uncle Gob.” George Michael mumbled into the phone. “I was just checking to ask why you aren’t at grandma’s birthday party. I mean, not that I’m trying to be too invasive but I wouldn’t want her to be upset that you couldn’t come. If you’re busy, I can tell her. Just making sure.” He rambled on.

Gob felt his heart sink but managed to rasp out an answer anyway. “I am busy. You don’t have to tell her because I –I already did that. Yeah, I already told her yester –yesterday when she asked me to come because it’s not like your father told me that –not important. I gotta go. Have fun, I guess.” 

Before George Michael could question him or even get out a single word, Gob hung up and put his phone down. Tony eyed him suspiciously, taking his boyfriend’s stuttering as a negative sign.

“Gobie, are you okay? What did your nephew want?” The magician asked.

Gob’s head snapped up and he quickly shook it, blinking rapidly against the tears forming in his eyes. “Just wanted to know why I wasn’t at my mother’s birthday party. It’s not like Michael told me that, that, that there’d be no party.” With that he got up and started pacing lightly, working himself up about this to a degree that made Tony worry.

He got up and approached Gob. “I don’t think I-”

“Understand?” Gob finished. “It’s nothing. Just my, my family being assholes again. I wouldn’t want to go to my mother’s birthday anyway. Why would I? To, to watch everyone fight and get drunk? To be disappointing? If they don’t want me there and Michael told me that there’d be no party, then so be it.” He scoffed. “But he could have guessed that his son might worry. It’s not like he, he is the only decent damn person in this family.”

Now Tony understood and he felt furious. He knew that the Bluth family was problematic, to say the least, but he couldn’t believe that they would not invite Gob to his mother’s birthday. It was simply common decency. He himself couldn’t remember how often he had been invited to events hosted by people that clearly didn’t like him too much. But common decency aside, he couldn’t stand his boyfriend looking so close to tears and stammering about not caring when he clearly did.

Thus he approached Gob and pulled him into a tight embrace. “Screw them.” He whispered. “I’d always invite you to my birthday. I wouldn’t even want to celebrate it without you.”

That’s what broke Gob. He started sobbing quietly, angry and sad tears running down his cheeks as he clung to Tony. Tony was the only person who’d ever be allowed to see him like this. If any of his family members saw him right now, he’d run off in an instance. If any of them saw him, crying, sniffling like a child, sobbing about being so hated by his family, he’d run off faster than light. But in the presence of his amazing boyfriend, he let his guard down. They were alone. No one could see him. And crying just felt really damn good at the moment.

“That’s it.” Tony praised. “Let it all out. I know you must be sad. I can’t believe how terrible your family can be.”

“Is, is it so bad to have me there? I don’t drink heavily, I don’t fight with everyone.” Gob sobbed as Tony swayed back and forth with him. “I don’t ruin the party as much as they manage to, to do so on their own.”

Tony slowly lead him to the couch so they could sit down. When they had done that, Tony pulled Gob halfway into his lap. “Yeah, I know. You’ve done your best and if they don’t appreciate it, they don’t even deserve you being there.”

“Now you’re being sappy to make me feel, feel better.” Gob stuttered, clinging to the other man.

“Oh, I can’t try to be sappy and make you feel better but you can totally drench my shirt in your tears?” Tony laughed. And even though he was joking and felt as though he had made that fairly clear, he felt Gob pulling back lightly. He quickly pulled him back against his chest. “I’m joking, Gobie. Just a joke. Soak my shirt all you want. I don’t mind looking like part of a wet t-shirt contest as long as I can comfort you.”

“They really don’t care about me.” Gob sobbed quietly, burying his face at Tony’s chest. “Not even a little bit. I could disappear and they wouldn’t care. I _did_ disappear and they didn’t care!”

“The wedding illusion?” Tony asked and felt Gob nod. “Well, I think if your assistant or whatever you might call it, hadn’t screwed up, your illusion would have been pretty good.“

“You don’t have to say that to make me feel better.” Gob slowly looked up at Tony and sighed sadly. “Sometimes I wish that I could actually disappear. Not just in an illusion but completely disappear from their lives so they wouldn’t have to put up with me anymore.”

“Gobie.” Tony cooed sadly, looking down at him.

“Not so much anymore and not when I’m with you.” The other male quickly corrected. “I mean, now that I have you I’m, you know, pretty happy. But when my family is being like this again, I just wish we could disappear.”

“You know what, Gob?” Tony smiled gently. “You know what we should do?”

“No. I can’t read minds.” 

“We should spontaneously appear at their party, like true magicians.” He then laughed. “But we should probably take the front door this time.”

“No, Tony.” Gob quickly shook his head. “They don’t want me there. It’s obvious. They don’t care about me enough and they don’t want me there.”

“Well, that’s too bad for them because we’ll crash the party and show them how good of a time they can have with you.”

Gob thought for a second. Even if they didn’t want him there, they’d probably feel guilty to see him show up even though they tried to keep him away –at least half of them. He nodded a little and then nodded again a little more enthusiastically.

“Then let’s go.” Tony wriggled free from Gob’s grasp and got up with him. “Come on, let’s crash your mother’s birthday party.”

Gob nodded, still a little weary, and grabbed Tony’s hand. “They like you more than me, did you know that? I think if you weren’t dating me, you’d be invited.”

“Well, I would have been really mad at them, had they tried to do that.” Tony smiled, leading Gob to the car. He had stood up for Gob a lot and would gladly do so against anyone that ever upset his lover.

\---

Meanwhile, everyone at the penthouse was having a rather normal party. Lucille was currently insulting Lindsay’s choice of clothes to which she retorted with remarks about her mother’s abilities to be a good mother –or lack thereof. All the while, Maeby was trying to convince George Michael to start an elaborate scheme to get the attention of Lindsay. But George Michael was not convinced and instead watched his aunt and grandma fight.

Michael was trying to talk to his father while George Sr. was talking about the great view with where he was sitting on the rail of the balcony. Buster was sitting on the couch, uncomfortable with the atmosphere but not any less cheerful. And Tobias was on the phone, trying to get an audition date for a commercial he wanted to be acting in.

Lindsay put her glass down on the table and crossed her arms in frustration, glaring at her mother. “Sometimes I wonder why I even come to your parties.”

Before Lucille could answer, the apartment door slammed open. 

“Did somebody say ‘Wonder’?” Everyone in close proximity turned to see Tony standing in the door, Gob behind him, holding the keys to the apartment.

“As if the party couldn’t get any worse.” Lucille sighed.

Tony smiled politely and closed the door behind him and Gob. “Since you didn’t feel the need to invite Gob, I took the liberty to invite myself here as his plus one.”

Lucille looked at Michael. “You invited him here, didn’t you?”

Michael, now standing in the doorway to the balcony, shook his head. “I did what you told me and told him there would be no party.”

George Michael sighed and looked up. “I did, sort of. I called him to ask why he wasn’t here. I didn’t want grandma to think her children stood her up. He told me he was busy.”

Michael sighed and nodded. “Well, you did the right thing. We shouldn’t have told him there’d be no party. We lied to him and that’s worse.” His son knew he would say that. 

“Yeah, and you know what’s even worse than lying to your family?” Tony asked. “The feeling of not being cared about. Have none of you ever heard of decency? I know none of you know the value of family but you could have at least been decent enough to get everyone in on the lie so Gob wouldn’t find out and get upset.”

“I’ll stop you right there.” Michael stepped closer to Tony. “I for one think family is the most important thing. Why else would I still put up with all of this?”

“But you didn’t invite your own brother to his mother’s birthday party and lied to him.”

Gob tried to step in and put a hand on Tony’s arm. “I’m fine. Let’s just leave. The party escalated into fighting anyway.”

“No, we’ll leave for sure. But not before I tell them that this is not okay.” Tony shook his head. 

Lindsay sighed. “If Gob had not nearly set the house on fire the last time he was here with one of his stupid magic tricks, maybe we would have invited him.”

Maeby looked at her mother. “I’m on Tony’s side.” She proclaimed since it was obvious that her mother was not on the magician's side. “Matter of fact, you’ve done more damage than Gob.”

Her mother smiled a little, feeling uncomfortable. “Now listen Maeby, I hosted many events in my life. For charity, no less.”

“You are the least charitable person, I know.” Lucille scoffed.

“My husband and I-”

“I would like to be excluded from this fight.” Tobias proclaimed, covering the receiver of his phone. “I’m on a phone call.”

“My husband and I hosted many charity events.” Lindsay exclaimed, before going back to fight with her mother.

Michael sighed in frustration and looked at Gob. “Do you want to stay and have a drink with us?”

“No way in hell.” Tony snapped. “We’re leaving. We just wanted to remind you that you have another family member that would have made this party better than it is.”

“That’s not hard.” Maeby mumbled, rolling her eyes. “Why am I even still here?”

Tony eyed everyone speaking before sighing. “Whatever all of you say, I just want you to know that your behaviour is terrible and hurtful. And I know that my words will probably not change anything but at least I can say that I tried.”

“Hurtful?” Michael asked, raising an eyebrow at Gob.

“No, it’s not like, like I got really sad or, or, or cried in Tony’s arms about it. It just –I just think-“ Gob stammered his way through a sentence until Tony cut him off.

“It is hurtful, even if Gob doesn’t show it.” Tony crossed his arms. “And you should all feel bad about your behaviour.”

Buster looked up. “I don’t know why we didn’t invite Gob. His tricks are funny.”

“Illusions.” Gob weakly protested, his face flaming red.

“I was trying to invite him to stay.” Michael protested and looked at Tony.

“Just because you got called out and now you’re trying to be a caring brother, so you don’t have to feel bad about yourself after you set the rule that family comes first.” Tobias chimed in. “Maybe we should talk about why you don’t want Gob to attend the party, if I may put on my therapist pants.”

Lindsay eyed him and rolled her eyes a little before getting back to bickering with her mother. Maeby eyed her parents and then stalked off to one of the bedrooms to get away from her family. George Michal followed, saying something about checking if she was alright. Michael sighed and faced Gob and Tony.

“Are you going to stay or not?” He asked, getting impatient with their antics.

Gob didn’t know how to respond. A part of him really wanted to stay but most of him wanted to just leave and spend a quiet evening with Tony, far away from all these antics and fighting.

“I mean, I would totally stay but, but I mean, you don’t want me to stay, do you?” Gob exclaimed, trying to sound light-hearted. “So I –I guess we’ll just head home.”

Tony nodded. “Yeah, we are.” He said gently before turning to Michael. “We’ll be going now. I hope this ‘party’ keeps going well for you all. And happy birthday, Mrs Bluth.” 

Gob could hear the anger coming from his boyfriend and couldn’t help the small smile that formed on his lips. Tony cared about him so much; so much more than anyone has ever done. 

“Goodbye.” He waved distractedly, his eyes fixed on Tony. “Happy birthday, mom.” He saw Lucille wave dismissively before going back to bickering with her daughter.

“I hope the next time I see you all, will be under better circumstances.” Tony then took Gob’s hand and ushered him out the flat, leaving a dumbfounded Michael who honestly felt a little guilty for his actions.

Once outside and on the way to the elevator, Tony turned to face Gob. “I’m sorry if I lost control there for a second. I was just so angry and you were so sad. I-”

Gob stopped him with a quick kiss to the cheek. “Thank you, Tony. I don’t think anyone has ever cared enough about me to stand up for me.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better.” Tony chuckled. “Anyway, is there anything you want to do or shall we go home?”

“Let’s just go home. I think I want to spend a quiet evening with you.” Gob said and kept his eyes on Tony as they entered the elevator.

“Same.” Tony breathed, smiling softly as he watched Gob leaned forward to press one of the buttons.

“Same.”


End file.
